Long before blogs there were journals and before that…diaries. They were locked books hidden under the mattress so that no one else could unearth our deepest darkest feelings….boy, we’ve come a long way baby.
This is an entry I recently came across from 2001.
The narrowness of the hallways intimidated me. They were long, stark white cinder blocks that looked more like prison walls than school hallways. The smell of disinfectant reassured me that the bathrooms were clean, but was it really good for the kids to be inhaling those chemicals? And why were the other kids so much bigger than my son? They looked older, maybe even meaner, and certainly not anything like the boys I liked my son to associate with. And what was with their parents? They seemed so calm, so matter-of-fact….going about the business of settling their child into the first day of school. They weren’t taking nearly as many pictures as I was. I was jealous of their composure. When the time had come I hugged and kissed my son goodbye and turned quickly to leave so that he would not see the tears that had welled up in my eyes. I briefly looked back to see my son embracing his father and lost any control I had maintained until then and cried all the way to the car and the entire two hour drive home. It was official, my son had just begun the Fall 2001 semester at Quinnipiac University. Yes my son went away to college. Actually he went ‘back’ to college since this year he was a returning sophomore. Does this get any easier? I went through this last year. Am I gonna have to go through this next year too? And then as a senior? God, what if he goes on to graduate school or law school as he intends? I could have four more years of this withdrawal stuff. I miss my son already.
I came home and talked to his fish. The one he bought last year at school, brought home for the holiday break and never reclaimed. He’s my fish now. I feed him, he loves me, he reminds me of my son. My daughters called to see how ‘I’ made it through ‘his’ first day. I recounted my ordeal, describing in great detail the cell my son now gets to call home…the cell he shares with two other boys, three beds, three dressers, three desks, three computers a TV and more a sneakers than Foot Locker. I drew diagrams on napkins to more clearly illustrate just how tiny and cramped my son’s life had become. I broke into a sweat just thinking of the injustice, that although for most of his life I was installing values that would keep him out of jail and the tiny horror that is now his dorm room, I now pay good money to have him incarcerated there.
I called his cell phone twice that night, got his voice mail and hung up. I also called his ‘cell’ twice that night, leaving messages that were both upbeat and a direct contradiction of how I was actually feeling. I kept everyone off the phone in anticipation of his return call. When PM turned into evening, and evening into morning I realized my son didn’t feel the need to talk to me. I took comfort in that, I think. I fed his gerbil, a summer acquisition that never made it back into his luggage, and left for work checking the answering machine only once for a possible missed message. Nothing! OK that could be a good thing…he’s busy! He’s happily rearranging his room so that the postage stamp sized floor space could now accommodate a couch. Alright that’s pushing it. Or not hearing from him could be a bad thing….he could be sad and lonely, maybe even depressed, traumatized from the uncertainty that is university life. Sitting in his cell, er…umm room staring out the window thinking of us here at home missing him. A tear welling up falls silently to the floor. Ok, ok we all know that’s not happening…I had to get a grip. I miss my son.
We were sitting down to dinner when he phone rang. Did I dare to get my hopes up? It was my son…the one my daughter’s say ‘walks on water’….an analogy that isn’t far from the truth in my mind’s eye. He was fine. He hadn’t called because he didn’t get back to his cell until the wee hours of the morning. He had been ‘getting acquainted’ with the new freshmen and re-acquainted with the returning sophomores. He and his cellmates hadn’t been able to re-arrange their cell to resemble anything but the cell it was designed to be, but he’s gotten shower privileges from the girls who lucked out in the housing lottery and all is right with his world. My dinner went down a little easier that night knowing that my son was not two states away pining for his room with the restless gerbil and oblivious fish. He can do his own laundry without shrinking anything or turning it pink. He can figure out when to buy soap and toothpaste, he can defrag his laptop and make macaroni and cheese in a microwave. Feeling totally obsolete and useless, I logged on to my computer and sat down to write my son an email. Did I mention I miss my son?
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